


The Voice

by eastern_wind



Series: The Darkest Hour [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Secrets, Tairinn has two twin brothers, Trevelyan (Dragon Age) has Sibling(s), and a part of series, and they are each other's world, bloodlines, future templar trevelyan, parents being difficult, this is a prequel to a huge story i'm working on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 02:19:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eastern_wind/pseuds/eastern_wind
Summary: Sometimes the world throws its worst at you to see how far you can go to survive. But when you are no longer capable of fighting, it sends you a sign that changes everything.Kid fic and a prequel to the huge story I'm working on right now. Part of the series.





	The Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Some Trevelyan family backstory along with a lineage tree here - https://eastern-wind-above-skyhold.tumblr.com/ If you are interested in the backstory of someone from this tree, drop me an ask and I’ll write a short description.
> 
> Comments, ideas and kudos are highly appreciated :)

Tairinn was six when her world had changed.

A lively and adventurous child she was, still roaming the estate with her brothers in tow, climbing pear trees her father was so proud of and sneaking into the kitchen at nights to chat with Edna the housemaid. It seemed like nothing had changed, except each time her twin brothers were caught while doing something forbidden or hurt themselves during games and trainings that their father held four times a week, she felt unfamiliar anger and urge to step in, to protect and take punishment in their stead rise in her chest.  


She tried to hide it, though, and for quite some time it was okay and she was okay too, swinging the wooden sword maybe a little too strong, moving a little too fast, but not enough to raise a suspicion, and learning to hide the gold invading her amber eyes in those moments of contained rage. The youngest daughter of Stefan Trevelyan was changing, but she knew better than to let it show or so Tairinn thought.  


Then came the Voice.  


They say things get better when you grow up, but somehow Tairinn had troubles believing it. The older she became, the louder the Voice was singing in her head, calling in a language unknown to her, urging to become someone else, to let the gold take over. Yes, that part she could understand.  


Still she did not tell her mother about it, knowing that for some unknown reason Adriana had always been too afraid there was something wrong with her daughter, something different, even if she tried not to let it show. Keeping her silence, Tairinn felt how they grew more and more apart, but only now her disinterest in all things proper and acceptable for a future noble bride was not to blame. She just could not let her mother know she was changing into someone new, someone Adriana Alamilla wouldn’t be proud of.  


After a long sleepless nights full of wistful thinking, Tairinn decided it was better not to tell her father too. Neither about the Voice, nor about the way she felt. It was much harder to be in his company now, as she spent more and more time with him, training. She loved the weight and feeling of a sword in her hands, the stories Stefan told her about the time in the army, the freedom and joy, that embraced her body with the gusts of eastern wind. The year had passed and at seven she started trading places with Ethan, who gladly let her go to his practice hours, hiding in the library to read one more tome about healing properties of some Thedas flora instead. She did not know whether her father saw through their trick, but hoped they still were too alike for him to take notice. These were happiest times Tairinn could remember despite the Voice haunting her through days and nights.  


She did tell her brothers though, because if there was someone she could fully trust, it were them.  


They say a child cannot possibly comprehend the way the world works, but Ethan proved them all wrong, spending all his free time in the library, looking up everything and anything that could explain the Voice his sister was so scared of. Sometimes Tairinn and Maxwell created a cover for him, distracting their father with all kinds of questions about swordsmanship, so Ethan could sneak into Stefan’s cabinet and borrow a book or two from there. He still found nothing though, but through those months his young mind acquired a keen interest in history and sciences of how human body works. Years later it would save hundreds of lives.  


They say that children are too arrogant to ask for help, always trying to prove they're capable, they're old enough. Even though at her seven years old she knew better than come to mother with this and father had always been too occupied with family business or training, it never even occurred to Tairinn that Maxwell would ask grandma Sybill for advice. It was him who spoke in hushed whispers with the previous Head of House Trevelyan, pleading to explain what was happening with his twin sister. It was him who stayed long nights awake, trying to hear through the thick stone walls whether she was asleep or pacing her room again in a fruitless attempt to shake the Voice off.  


Maxwell was the first to say it out loud, to speak about the problem, but nor he, neither Ethan never came to know the truth while they were kids.  


“Some things run too deep in our blood and such is a burden of Trevelyan heir”, grandmother Sybill told Tairinn on the wake of Satinalia of 9:22, gently braiding her long curly hair in preparation for the Chantry service. “Your mother interfered in the matters she is unable to understand and now it is you who have to carry this weight. Go speak with your father, dear. He shall explain what happens to you, if he ever finds courage”. The elder woman smiled, her dark and slender fingers tracing a new scar on her granddaughter’s brow, “The Voice you hear is no master of yours, but just a legacy from generations long forgotten. You will not succumb to its plea, no matter what, for you are my blood and you are strong. Shield your mind with good memories and meditate as Stefan has taught you, let the prayer carry the Voice away. Go and may the Maker watch over you”.  


And Tairinn went. She never came to question her grandma’s words because of the absolute certainty the elder woman spoke with. That day Tairinn for the first time felt like a heavy weight of being alone with the Voice, being wrong has been lifted from her heart and she was happy.  


However, her mother was not. Adriana has been silently seething since the moment she overheard her husband promise to tell Tairinn more about the Voice when she is older. The woman began to grow increasingly nervous and tried to stop all the training her daughter got from Stefan, insisting she must prepare for her role as wife and mother instead, not wield a sword and collect bruises. Who knows, maybe her illness started just then and not two years later…  


Tairinn’s mother clearly thought that it was Sybill who told her daughter of the “curse” as she’s been calling it and during that spring all the servants of Trevelyan estate were buzzing with gossip since not only Lady Sybill was completely ignoring Adriana, now the feeling was mutual. But Tairinn could not help but feel encompassing guilt for being the cause of the hostility between two women and in a desperate attempt to prove her love to mother and appease her wishes she called her training with father off, sitting down for long hours listening to the mother’s moralizing and preaching instead.  


She tried so hard to be the one her mother wanted her to be, but the Voice only grew stronger, singing its strange hypnotizing songs, asking her to let the gold in. Tairinn did manage to pretend she could fight it for nearly half a year, but in the beginning of the fall she gave up and went to her father for help. The first thing they've done was cut Tairinn's hair to match her brothers’ again.  


The things were looking up and slowly but surely the girl became accustomed to her new routine. She spent her days under her mother's watchful eye, but when the darkness started to slowly creep up the walls of the estate, Ethan took her place, too alike to his sister for anyone to really notice, and Tairinn fled to the training grounds in the backyard, where her father had been already waiting.  


On the day of her eight birthday, Stefan gave her a sword. Not a wooden replica, but a real one and then he told her the words she would never forget.  


“No matter who stands against you, what his weapons are and how good he seems to be, always watch the eyes. The body may lie, the sword may trick you, but in the eyes lies the truth”.  


Since that day he’d been teaching her alone and even Tairinn's brothers were not allowed to spar with her when she wielded her own heavy, no matter how small sword. The Voice, lulled by the girl's newfound conviction to the cause, grew weaker, sometimes stopping completely, brought under control by training and meditation.  


Then the news came, shattering Tairinn’s confidence in a stable tomorrow. Her mother was pregnant, which made Tairinn immensely happy, but then Edna, who had been pouring a glass of water for the girl still panting heavily after her evening work out, dropped the real bomb. Ethan was to be sent to Templar Order and she was to be engaged to some Tanterveil noble. The world, so carefully held together by a thin thread of Tairinn's desire to make her family happy, began to fall apart.  


That very night she silently pried open the door to Ethan's room and slid in, covering uneven flame of a small candle with shaky hand. She told him everything Edna had shared with her, still unable to think straight.  


“I am not fit to be a templar”, her brother whispered weakly, “I wanted to go to the Chantry, to become a scholar. Why would they do that to me? And to you! You doesn't even know him, Rin!”  


“I don't know”, she answered, unmoving and cold and her eyes were shining murky gold. “But I will find a way out. Let's speak with Max”.  


They spend the next few nights planning, but nothing came to mind, filling Tairinn with dread over her and Ethan's future. Then the Voice was back.  


She curled up in a ball under a warm quilt her mother knitted years ago and stared into the empty void of the sky so vast and unreachable from her spot on the cold stone windowsill. The moonless night was at its darkest and only a small lantern sitting on a garden gate was illuminating the outside of Trevelyan estate, throwing eerie shadows on the pavement. Something, maybe a rat, lurked in the bushes, making them look like ogres from the stories of previous Blights that grandmother used to tell when twins were younger. Maybe soon she would tell them again to Tairinn's new brother or sister, stories about men and women from the House Trevelyan who fought the darkness and protected the weak.  


The girl opened the window and carefully jumped down, rolling on the hard ground to break the impact, and slowly went towards the backyard, hoping that some sword practice would ease her mind and singing of the Voice. She didn't try to cut the way through the stables because the Voice was too loud now and even though other humans didn't seem to hear it, the animals reacted violently to Tairinn's presence. Grandmother once said that it happened with her also when she’d been young, but she never let such stories linger.  


“Why send Ethan to the Order if everyone knows he won't fit?” She thought, gently taking her sword from a stall and going through familiar movements. “Why trade me off to someone if I could do it?” And then it hit her, the realization of the idea that'd been itching at the back of her mind for days.  


Ethan could become a scholar. She could make it happen. She could just go to the Order instead of her brother, fulfilling the duty to the Chantry as every generation of Trevelyans had done before. Well, her mother thought her only to be fit for marriage. She could never let Tairinn go to the Order, to become a warrior, because she was too engulfed in her fears and misconceptions, but as the time had shown… what she didn't know, couldn't hurt her. The plan already forming in her head, the girl ran back to the house, needing to discuss it with her brothers.  


The twins swung into action immediately, trying to come up with unbreakable cause, explaining why Tairinn could suddenly take so much interest in the Chantry career, but all their attempts were set aside when it became evident that Adriana fell ill. The pregnancy took too much out of her and, no longer capable to watch her daughter so strictly, she gradually loosened her control. After Brendon and Erin were born, she was too encompassed with caring for the newborns and trying not to let the illness overcome her, so when Stefan proposed to send the elder now daughter to the Chantry, the woman agreed to let Tairinn go almost without a fight.  


It seemed so strange and unreal to look at the place she'd been calling home for almost ten years and know that this was most possibly the last time she saw it. Tairinn closed her eyes and tried to loosen the grip on the horse’s mane, feeling the animal's apparent discomfort. She and Ethan were leaving home with their uncle Knight-Corporal Frederic Trevelyan, who promised to bring them to Markham where Ethan would stay at the Chantry and from where Tairinn would be sent to Wycome's monastery called Her First Word.  


Just before the sun sent its first rays onto the Trevelyan grounds, green and yellow with ripe pear trees, Stefan took a step to the dark horse, carrying his daughter and softly said:  


“Remember this. When your time comes, you will hear your blood calling, the loudest Voice. Try to find someone, who will be able to take you back from the gold. Embrace your nature and let it guide you for the world around is a perfect storm, but you are its eyes”.  


“I will”, she said and barely managed to hold back tears, watching Maxwell, who held loudly crying Brendon, step closer to their slightly swaying mother.  


“I will miss you”, Adriana gently murmured, looking so pale and frail she seemed to become entirely another person. “Let the Maker keep you both safe”.  


The sun finally broke through the thick autumn fog and uncle Frederic gave both children a small nod, “It's time”.  


“Let my mother never know what we've done”, Tairinn prayed while she waved her family goodbye for the last time.  


Tairinn was ten and her world had changed forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> If you liked it, please drop some feedback in the comments!


End file.
